Recent events in the USA have inevitably encouraged much writing about ‘whether it could happen here’. Would our constitution - and/or the Civil Service - be strong enough to withstand a Trump-like Prime Minister?
The prior question, however, is whether there is something about the British electorate that would ensure that a Trump could never seize power in the UK. American writers had previously considered the same question about their electorate, particularly in a gripping pre-Trump novel entitled … It Can’t Happen Here.
Here are some lightly edited extracts. The Trump character is Senator Windrip. You may see some resemblance, prescience even.
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Introducing Senator Windrip
With all the discontent there is in the country to wash him into office, Senator Buzz Windrip has got an excellent chance to be elected President, next November. And then I, the liberal, and you, the plutocrat, will be led out and shot at 3am.
Remember how casually most Americans accepted Tammany grafting and Chicago gangs and the crookedness of so many of President Harding's appointees? Could Windrip's, be worse? Remember the Ku Klux Klan? Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut "liberty cabbage" and somebody actually proposed calling German measles "liberty measles".
Senator Windrip's Manifesto
"I want to stand up on my hind legs and not just admit but frankly holler right out that we've got to change our system a lot - maybe even change the whole Constitution (but change it legally and not by violence)."
Buzz Windrip's election platform was all against the banks but all for the bankers - except the Jewish bankers who were to be driven out of finance entirely.
He had fully tested but unspecified plans to make all wages very high and the prices of everything produced by these same highly paid workers very low.
He was 100% for labour but 100% against all strikes.
He was in favour of the United States preparing to produce its own coffee, sugar, perfumes, tweeds and nickel, instead of importing them.
America could defy the World - and maybe if that World was so impertinent as to defy America in turn, Buzz hinted he might have to take it over and run it properly.
He guaranteed to all persons absolute freedom of religious worship - provided however that no atheist, agnostic, believer in black magic, nor any Jew who shall refuse to swear allegiance to the New Testament, nor any person of any faith who refuses to take the pledge to the flag, shall be permitted to hold any public office or to practise as a teacher, professor, lawyer, judge or as a physician except in the category of obstetrics.
All women now employed shall as rapidly as possible (except in such peculiarly feminine spheres of activity as nursing and beauty parlours) be assigned to return to their incomparably sacred duties as home-makers and as mothers of strong honourable future citizens of the Commonwealth.
Any person advocating communism, socialism or anarchism, or advocating refusal to enlist in case of war shall be subject to trial for high treason.
Congress shall, immediately upon our inauguration, initiate amendments to the Constitution providing (a) that the President shall have the authority to institute and execute all necessary measures for the conduct of the government during this critical epoch, (b) that Congress shall serve only in an advisory capacity calling to the attention of the President and his aides and Cabinet any needed legislation but not acting upon same until authorised by the President so to act, and (c) that the Supreme Court shall immediately have removed from its jurisdiction the power to negate by ruling them to be unconstitutional or by any other judicial action any or all acts of the President, his duly appointed aides, or Congress.
Buzz Windrip's Character
Senator Windrip was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his ideas almost idiotic. But he was an actor of genius. And in between tricks he would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts:- figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect.
Below this surface stagecraft was his uncommon natural ability to be authentically excited by and with his audience, and they by and with him.
He believed in being chummy with all waitresses, and he believed in the superiority of anyone who possessed a million dollars. He regarded poetry and all foreigners, possibly accepting the British, as degenerate. But he was the common man twenty times magnified by his oratory so that while the other commoners could understand his every purpose (which was exactly the same as their own) they saw him towering among them and they raised hands to him in worship.
With a hint, a grin, a wink, a handshake, Buzz could convince the wealthy that they could trust his common sense and finance his campaign - and their contributions came in by the hundred thousand, often disguised as assessments on imaginary business partnerships.
After Buzz Windrip's Election
Never in American history had the adherents of a President been so well satisfied. They were not only appointed to whatever political jobs there were but also to ever so many that really were not. And with such annoyances as Congressional investigations hushed, the official awarders of contracts were on the merriest of terms with all contractors.
Under a tyranny most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn 'reasonable' and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to stop and speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.
Much of a revolution for so many people is nothing but waiting. That is one reason why tourists seldom see anything but contentment in a crushed population. Waiting, and its brother death, seem so contented.
Thus had things gone in Germany, exactly thus in Soviet Russia, in Italy and Hungary and Poland, Spain and Cuba, and Japan and China. Not very different had it been under the blessings of liberty and fraternity in the French Revolution. All dictators followed the same routine as if they had all read the same manual of sadistic etiquette. And now, in the humorous, friendly, happy-go-lucky land of Mark Twain, Doremus saw the homicidal maniacs having just as good a time as they had had in central Europe.
POSTSCRIPT
It Can’t Happen Here was written in 1935, clearly influenced by the rise of fascism in Europe. The author was Sinclair Lewis. And it is still in print.
Martin Stanley